About young drug users: The stories of no one

Abstract

The present study addresses the increasing process of judicialization of mental health care of young drug users, and aims at problematizing the way in which a biopolitics directed towards the government of the population of 'addicted teenagers' has been developed in the relationship between the fields of Mental Health and Justice. The development of this research is based on the analysis of lawsuits of adolescents that had been ordered the protective measure of psychiatric hospitalization for treatment for drug addiction. We have based our study on the theoretical and methodological tools of Social Psychology, especially with regard to the work of Michel Foucault, in the way that this author developed an analysis of both discourses and the emergence of knowledges in their articulation with power mechanisms and technologies. By analyzing these documents, we have attempted to identify that this biopolitics, in spite of guaranteeing rights, operates by producing vulnerabilities.